Friday, December 23, 2011

I don't see any happy ending here. I see a selfish narcissist who staged an abduction (this IS a crime) terrifying her family and community, possibly getting an innocent person in trouble and investigated, wasting tons of tax money, police manpower (which should have been spent helping real victims), wasting citizen's time that they took off of work and away from their families to help search, and she gives a black eye to true missing women and the Muslim community. The family now has to deal with the humiliation of being fools who claimed up and down Aisha was truly abducted and they have to live with the fact Aisha is not the girl they thought she was, but a user and abuser. That family I sure is shedding tears but not of true joy because there is something seriously not right with Aisha Khan. Khan should be arrested for staging a crime and required to pay back the money wasted on her search. The family needs to apologize to the community (after all, they claimed Aisha wouldn't fake her disappearance and they should have known their own relative better or not lied about the kind of girl she was) and they should donate equal time helping true victims of crime until they pay back all the time the community wasted on Aisha. They can give the $10,000 reward money they offered to the police or to a victims' organization. Then maybe there would be an acceptable ending.

A truly happy ending would have been the recovery of a truly abducted person before she had been harmed. If my daughter had committed an elaborate hoax (and this was an elaborate hoax) on me, my family, and the community, I would be madder than hell. What kind of person does that? I can tell you. Jennifer Wilbanks, Audrey Sieler, Emily Rose, and Bethany Storros. These are not nice women; they are selfish and cruel and the families cannot be "happy" that their daughters committed these vile acts, maybe relieved they are not dead (in the cases of the women who faked abductions) but not "happy." Let's not sugarcoat this rotten attention seeking act. If Aisha Khan really just wanted to escape an undesirable situation, she would have simply taken off, left a note, and gone on to live her life. She choose instead to abuse others and that is not acceptable.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Beautiful 19-year-old Aisha Khan went missing recently from an Overland Park, Kansas community college campus. Unlike most girls who go missing, religion is more than fifty percent of the discussion and debate raging on news and blog post comments. Some of the comments are just nasty crap attacking Muslims and Islam in general. Some people wonder if her family is involved in her disappearance, some kind of honor killing or Sharia related violence. Others wonder if the young bride of three weeks was forced into an arranged marriage and she ran away because she was unhappy or because she had a boyfriend she loves that she had to give up. Some people are getting mad because any cultural or religious issues are being brought up at all and point out that if this were a White, Christian girl gone missing, people would simply be looking for a serial killer considering that in her last phone message and text to her sister at approximately 11 am , she said she was being harassed by a creepy, bad smelling man who she had to slap to get him away from her and he had been mad. She said the incident was really scary and her heart was beating out of her chest.

That was the last she was heard from. Her cousin went to the campus and found her books, her cell phone, iPod, and some stories say her backpack (and it has not been mentioned if she has a wallet with ID and money) as well, laying on an isolated table where she had been studying. Aisha has not been seen since.

So what could have happened to Aisha? What should the police be doing? Well, all of those questions and theories being bandied about on message boards are not all unreasonable. There are three basic possibilities; one, she was abducted, two, she was murdered by family and an abduction staged, or, three, she ran away and staged an abduction.

We can eliminate the "murdered by family" one first. There WAS a phone call from Aisha and unless her sister was imitating her voice and making a phone call from Aisha's phone to her own, then Aisha was alive on campus at 11 am. Someone could have forced her to make the call and then killed her but this going pretty Hollywood. I watched her family on television and they seem very distraught. They are truly searching for Aisha and they have reached out to all religious communities. Aisah is Muslim but I see nothing in the family that leads me to believe they would have enacted any honor killing of any sort. She is seen with very proper Hijab and without and with her head covered with a headscarf but not tightly, her hairline showing. She seems to be a modest Muslim girl but not severely strict. I can't tell exactly where she is from but her name and her clothing indicate either Pakistan or India. I see no extremism of any sort that leads me to believe her family did her in and then staged an elaborate abduction.

On the other hand, the circumstances of the disappearance of Aisha are a bit odd. It was 11 in the morning when she supposedly was abducted. Kind of an odd time to grab a girl off of the campus. But could it have happened? Yes, because the location she was at is a bit isolated. She was studying at a table enclosed by three walls. The street was enough of a distance to find it hard to believe someone grabbed her and hauled her off to it without any trace of a struggle.

Then, we have the story of this creepy man harassing Aisha. He was smelly, maybe from marijuana or booze. She says she slapped him. She mentions being freaked out, but she says no more about the man. The message she left is odd. She says she is scared but she her voice is a bit flat; no sound of panic, no hyperventilation; she sounds more like she is just reporting a disturbing event that she was weirded out by but is fully finished and done. This would seem to indicate the man was long gone, off down the street and out-of-sight. Would she then sit back down at the table in this isolated spot and continue studying? One would think not unless she was totally confident he was not returning. More likely, even if he were gone from view, if her heart was beating like crazy and she was so upset, she would grab her books and go. Instead she makes six calls and texts over nine minutes from that same location after the alleged attack; a long time to hang around in an area one feels unsafe. This just doesn't sit well with me.

The alternative is that she slapped the man, he went around the corner out of sight, and then came right back to get her. But, there is no sign of a struggle Her phone is lying on the table, not smashed on the ground or missing. How did he take her away? If he was some messed up druggie or homeless guy as some have suggested, would he even have a car to take her away in? Was she taken in a car? Aisha didn't mention a vehicle at all. She, actually, didn't describe the man either outside of saying he was creepy and smelly and tried to kiss her. Was he old, young, White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Arab? So, there are a few things here that don't make a lot of sense. Why?

Well, it could be that we are missing a lot of information. Maybe there was a street right there. Maybe there is more in the text message we haven't heard about. Maybe Aisha sounds rather controlled even when she is in a panic. Maybe she has a tendency to minimize bad things and then go straight back to what she was doing. This is what the police need to find out by analyzing the evidence and in interviewing the family. There was another young woman, Kelsey Smith, abducted from Overland Park parking lot in 2007 who was later found murdered. However, the perpetrator of that crime was found and convicted, so he could not have abducted Aisha.

Could Aisha have run away? Yes, she could have. There is nothing as of yet to prove there was an abduction. Maybe she did have issues. Some say she might have been forced into an arranged marriage because she is so young. And Muslim. Possible? Yes. But, this doesn't mean she is unhappy. Many people in the world have arranged marriages and are perfectly content with them. Arranged marriages vary as much as nonarranged marriages. Nonarranged marriages can be anything from an impulsive Las Vegas marriage after a boozy night with a stranger, to a whirlwind romance ending in a marriage after three months together, or a very careful analysis of compatibility that ends in marriage after five or ten years. Some nonarranged marriages don't care what the parents of the partners think and others won't marry without their blessing.

Arranged marriages vary as well. Some bride and grooms never meet until the wedding day. Some have known each other for years. Some matches are arranged totally by the parents and the children have no say. Some set up matches but then allow the young woman and man meet and get to know each other and then agree to the marriage. I don't know what kind of marriage Aisha has; she could be very happy or extremely miserable, just like any of us a number of months into a marital state.

Would she run away? Well, she might if she were terribly unhappy and didn't know how to tell her parents and get out of the marriage. She COULD have a boyfriend. She could run away for reasons that have nothing to do with being married. She could want attention or just want a completely different life. Women who run away don't have to be Muslim women as Jennifer Wilbanks and a number of White, Christian women have proven.

I don't know at this point what happened to Aisha. I hope she is alive. She is a beautiful girl and seems to have a family who cares about her and is terribly bereft at her disappearance. I am sure they want her to come home. If someone has abducted her, the odds aren't good of her surviving and already too much time has passed without finding her. However, if they have done solid ground searches right in the area and have not found Aisha, she would have to have been taken in a car. This gives some small hope to her being kept captive some place rather than being dragged into the bushes and immediately being raped and murdered. The number of girls held captive is terribly minute, but it has happened and we can pray this is the situation.

If she has run away, I hope she calls home or is found soon. It is not right that that family has to think the worst if it isn't that way at all.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

No one likes to think of an abducted child as being dead, least of all the parents. Even detectives on a case hold out hope that a kidnapped juvenile will be found alive and returned home to his or her family. Police officers deal enough every day with sad endings and they cross their fingers and hope that this time, they will save a child's life, not find her skeleton in the weeds along the side of a road. They would like to triumphantly reunite the child with her parents, not knock on the door and deliver the dreaded message to the poor mother and father.

Okay, so what do we actually have here? Of the 115 stereotypical kidnapped children, a good portion of these are pre-teens or teens that sex predators took and killed or enslaved as their little wives. A bunch are babies that some women wanted to pretend were their own. Some of these children were found quickly, within hours, and were saved from a worse fate. Some were kidnapped by a close acquaintance who was angry with the family for some reason.

Very few are toddlers or little girls from ages three to five. There seem to be no exact statistics on the age of the children abducted, by whom, and what happened to them. So, in lieu of finding these, I put out a challenge to the folks that believe statistics support Madeleine McCann being alive. I asked people to give me the names of little girls who had been abducted by total strangers who were found alive after months or years. So, far I have had only one name given to me; Tara Burke, a toddler who was found alive ten months after she was abducted by a sexual predator duo. This crime was 29 years ago in 1982.

I can, however, name little girl after little girl who was abducted by a stranger and was found dead in the following days, weeks, months, or years. But, so far, I have only been given the name of one child victim over a period of three decades who was found alive. I am sure there are a few more but the point I am making is there are incredibly few of these cases with a "happy ending" in comparison to little abducted girls who have been murdered by their kidnappers. Yes, a few preteen and teen girls have been found alive after being abducted: Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, Natascha Kampusch - these girls were kept as sex slaves and were at an age the rapist viewed them as "young women" who should enjoy being taught sex techniques and could learn how to please the captor. Little three-year-old girls like Madeleine McCann are not going to do well in the "girlfriend" department and will lie there and cry and scream. Little girls are raped and murdered almost 100% of the time. Sad but true.

Therefore, if Madeleine McCann was indeed kidnapped by a stranger, there is very little possibility she was alive even three hours later. Does that mean a truly good tip should be ignored that points in the direction that she is alive and held captive somewhere? Of course not. She could be the one in whatever high number that wasn't murdered. But, detectives have to be realistic when it comes to using resources. They can't waste millions of dollars and massive hours of manpower running down ridiculous sightings and unlikely scenarios.

Likewise, Gerry and Kate McCann should tell donators that, although they hope Madeleine will be the miracle child recovered alive this decade, they recognize the chances of that happening are very, very slim. Then, if people want to contribute to finding a perpetrator who might have taken Maddie and killed her (to get justice and save other little girls), they can do that. If they want to give money in spite of the horribly poor odds of finding Madeleine alive, this is their choice. But the McCanns should tell the truth and donators should know it.

The McCanns, if they didn't have anything to do with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and want to find her and who took her, they ought to be using donations to look for a dead child in Praia da Luz buried in someone's backyard.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

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My ebook, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, removed from Amazon following threat of legal action by Carter-Ruck on behalf of Gerry and Kate McCann, can still be found online at Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. Keep posted for news of my upcoming legal action with attorney Anne Bremner against the McCanns for tortuous interference with business and libel.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

For those who don't know, the Leveson Inquiry that has been going on in the UK is essentially a hearing about media intrusion into private lives and grievous media abuse by way of printing lies and outrageous stories without basis in fact.

I am not going to discuss any particular people who gave testimony at the Inquiry but I want to discuss where I feel both professional and personal responsibility has an impact on what ends up in the media and where those of us in the media need to point the finger - at others or ourselves - and under what circumstances.

First, I agree with much that was said about the media's need to act in a professional and legal manner. No story should take precedence over the physical safety of those the news reporters are attempting to write about (running them down with a car, crushing them against a wall, tripping them, etc.) as all of these actions are clearly physical assaults which are crimes.

Next, journalists are supposed to be writing news, not gossip, nor opinion. Therefore, they should have facts and legitimate sources to back up their stories. For example, some silly folks have been recently claiming on Twitter and Facebook that I am a drunk - I guess because I made a joke about how wine can't be sold before a certain time in the morning in Washington DC and a couple of times I made reference to having a wine with dinner. This is all quite ridiculous because anyone who spends time around me knows I rarely have more than a glass of wine or one beer a couple times a week, if that. I could count the times in my life on one hand when I have had more than two glasses of anything alcoholic in the same night.

But, suppose someone had caught a pic of me the day I got out of a car in front of CNN and sprawled into the road. I had stepped sideways and caught my tennis shoe on the edge, my ankle caved and I went down onto the pavement. Next we read in the press, "Profiler Pat Brown in Drunken Sprawl at CNN!" Okay, that really is libelous. It is NOT news because the reporter didn't actually bother to find out if I was drunk; he would have gotten a cool pic, linked it to Internet gossip, and published this bogus story. This is the kind of thing that has gotten out of hand in the tabloids and on Internet "news" sites (gather.com, examiner.com, etc) where there is no concern for actually reporting of facts and there is a dearth of editors and a lot of money to be made making up stuff and not worrying about its veracity.

There, however, is nothing wrong with printing that a professional person has a theory (as it is a fact that person has a theory) as long as it it made clear that this is what it is. A newspaper or news magazine is also supposed to be to a reasonable extent (although in reality this is often not true) impartial and merely reporting the news; the idea is there ought to be some even-handedness in reporting what is going on in the world or a particular story. The journalist is supposed to squelch his viewpoints and just reports the facts, ma'am. I do differentiate print news outlets and television news outlets which have clearly added a great deal of commentary to the news these days, and, as long as it is clearly commentary and is not mixed up with the actual facts of the news, I am okay with it.

So, I agree with many speaking at the Leveson Inquiry that the media is a bit out of control in its aggressiveness in getting a hot story or making one up that is simply not true.

But, there is another aspect to some of this: excessive whining by those who court the media or who seek fame and fortune and then don't like ALL of the results. Or for those who end up in the media due to behaviors that have landed them in hot water. Look, sometimes we make mistakes, do stupid stuff, even outrageous shit, or even do something that is right but risky and we get stuck with the unfortunate results of said behaviors. I think we can all relate to this in some form or another. We all likely have humiliated ourselves at some time in our lives or lost a friend or a job due to some remark or bad behavior; we have suffered the consequences of our actions, regardless of whether we knew what was coming or got blindsided. If we did something foolish, we have to live with it. If we did something courageous but got slammed for it, we have to still live with it. This is called "life."

When it comes to people stepping into the media spotlight..hullo....yes, you did know you were playing with fire. If you have become ridiculously famous or rich or you take major risks in life, you gotta deal with it. If you a a rich businessman in Mexico, Central or South America, you cannot be unaware that kidnapping of your children could happen to you. If you are an international reporter in a war zone, you can't say you thought getting your leg blown off by an IED was as an impossibility. Police officers know they may get shot, mountain climbers know they may fall, boxers know they may get brain damage. Choices comes with consequences.

Marilyn Monroe or J.K. Rowling were once unknowns and walked the streets without anyone paying them a bit of attention. Then they became rich and famous and they both had the media and fans bugging the hell out of them. Yes, that is what comes with the territory and it is bit annoying to hear the whining about "I have no private life," and "News people follow me around." No shit, Sherlock. Lucky for you, you can buy a billion dollar house with massive walls and security and you can ride in a limo with bodyguards and you can afford to fly to some isolated tropical paradise for your vacation.

I am no where in the league of Monroe or Rowling with fame and fortune, but I have to deal with the downside of being on television, being an author, and being vocal about issues I believe need to be addressed, sometimes the less popular side of the debate. I get hate email, I have libelous garbage and vicious rumors spread about me on the Internet, I have pages dedicated to trashing my work and my reputation, and I have unflattering pictures that show up (some taken by people I have met at a public function, some from bad days on television, and some that have been Photoshopped). I have had the media report things incorrectly, repeat libelous stuff, and write less than flattering stories about me. These things are not exactly pleasant, but if you step into this kitchen you better learn to take the heat and find ways to minimize its negative effects. Some celebrities have assistants that only pass on fan mail and block everything else. Some celebrities have entourages to cheer them on and tell them how wonderful they are day and night. Some celebrities go to therapists.

I have found my own ways to deal with negative assaults on me. I have a "Hate Mail" file in my Outlook box. As soon as I see nastiness seeping out of the words in front of me, I say, "Bye!" and toss it into the hate file. I block stalkers and harassers from my site on Facebook and Twitter (no, this is not curtailing your Freedom of Speech). Mostly, I keep a sense of humor and humility about negative opinions of me: some actually have a bit of validity( I am not a perfect person and sometimes I think, well, yeah, he is kind of right about that...) and others just are so ridiculous, you really can laugh about what they say. So far I have been called a drunk, a liar, a fraud, a narcissist, a psychopath, a media whore, a moneygrubber, a sadist, a neglectful mother, an abusive mother, a vicious fishwife, a menopausal psychotic, a stalker, a fugly bitch...am I forgetting something? (Don't worry, someone will show up in the comments and fill in the blanks). Luckily, after a while, you kind of get used to it, especially in the days of Internet communications where it is essentially the Wild Wild West again with everyone and his brother taking potshots at you..

I also have to be careful of what I do. I surely will not be on a nude beach anytime soon or that pic will show up on Facebook within minutes (being my age, quite frankly, I am not too happy about ANY photo showing up of me in a bathing suit). I have to be careful in any public location and in any relationship. God knows, with cell phone cameras, you better know who you are alone with or you are going to end up on YouTube in a sex video. When you come right down to it, you DO lose your private life when you become a public figure and you have to work overtime to protect those private moments by going to very well controlled private situations (your own home, a trusted friend's home, etc) or a far off place where no one has a clue who you are or you have to go in disguise. Not always an easy life, but if one wants out of the limelight, one can get out of the limelight.

Another important thing for people at this Leveson Inquiry to recognize (as well as all others who are getting media attention) is that the people matter the most don't pay that much mind to the media garbage out there. My family and friends know exactly who I am, as do the people I work with; my interactions with them are the same as they have always been because when we are together, we have our same personal and professional relationship which depends on just me and them and not on all the stories that run rampant out in the papers and on websites.

So, does the media need to get its act together? I say, "Yes," as far as properly reporting the news and not crossing the line of libel and physical assault. But, media personalities also need to get their acts together and acknowledge their own responsibility for the life they have chosen, accept the pros and cons of that lifestyle and stop blaming everyone else for the downside of fame and fortune. If it really is too much, give away all your money and go live in Bangladesh.

By the way, ask most people who receive a lot of media attention if they would rather give up their high profile life and I doubt you will find many who would wnt to.. There are definitely negatives that come with media visibility but I can tell you that the opportunities that come with that visibility are most often worth the downside of fame - and I am not talking about money, but the ability to do things that would never have been possible without that media boost - increased communications, achieving goals in one's field that would be impossible without a high profile, having an impact on important issues - so many advantages come from the limelight, that those who are lucky to be the rare ones to get any amount of it should refrain from complaining about being famous. They should thank their lucky stars.

Monday, November 14, 2011

There is a new link to a blog making its way around the Internet which claims Pat Brown excuses criminality and is a big leftist.

This claim always make me laugh. I have no issues with people being liberal or conservative, or even far to the right or left. I may have a rousing discussion with them but I can still like a person with diametrically opposing views. I, myself, am a conservative, a constitutionalist, pro-Second Amendment, pro-carry, and pro-death penalty. The concept that I am a big liberal/anti-gun/soft on crime started in two places. Both came from the far right over the issues of gun control and terrorism. Some pro-gun folk on a particular site got all bent out of shape over a television commentary I did on men who kill their girlfriends. I pointed out that if you are a woman and you note these three things in your fellow, you might want to run the other way: a very controlling personality, an obsession with violence, and a massive gun collection. These pro-gun folks only paid attention to the last part and saw red; Pat Brown is saying all men with a gun collection are violent psychopaths who kill their wives and girlfriends.

Of course, this is not true. I know many men with gun collections, but they don't have continual violent ideation nor are they control freaks who push their women around. What is funnier is that I own two weapons and my children own weapons, more than one weapon each. I am pro-carry. But, for years, it has been claimed I am a big liberal who wants to take everyone's guns away!

The other far right group that decided I was a big leftist went nuts after I labeled the Ft. Hood Shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, a mass murderer rather than a terrorist. One site claims that I refused to even clarify my position, that I have some nerve to not call him a terrorist, even though I detailed three times over in the video they posted of me on FOX news my exact definitions of a mass murderer and a terrorist and why I think Hasan is the former and not the latter. I will explain it here again so somewhere on the Internet it is clear what I really believe and why.

A terrorist is someone who works with a terrorist organization over a period of time, is bred to be a terrorist and instructed on what to do by the organization. Then, the terrorist carries out the terrorist attack on behalf of the terrorist organization and its ideology. Finally, the attack itself, although the terrorist might have psychopathological issues of his own, is committed in order to forward a political ideology and coerce a government or country into making concessions that benefit the group's agenda.

A mass murderer is psychopath who has issues in his own life and wants to do something that will show the world it should have paid more attention to him, that he is someone important, and now they will never forget him. They want to go out with a bang and make all the newspapers. They may create a political ideology to justify their big day but they have not been trained nor are they working in concert with a terrorist organization.

9/11 was a terrorist attack; this is clear. So are other terrorist attacks; for example, places that blow up in India and Egypt are terrorist attacks; Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi in India, and Sharm-el-Sheik and Luxor in Egypt. Most of the Indian attacks are over who should own Kashmir - Pakistan or India (or neither) - and are committed by members of Lashkar-i-Taiba (LET). Some of the attacks are over Bangladesh. Egypt has a variety of factions trying to force the government to act toward Israel or the US in the way that terrorist group wishes. They are all politically motivated and usually involve lengthy planning and groups of operatives. The 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon was a terrorist attack aimed at getting the United States to go home. It worked. The 2004 Madrid train bombings were carried out to influence the upcoming election and to get Spain to pull out of Iraq. It worked. Most of these terrorist attacks cited are radical Islamist groups, but not all terrorist attacks are committed by al-Qaeda or their cells or Islamic radicals. There are and have been terror groups in India (some are radical Hindus or Radical Christians), Sri Lanka, Africa, South America, Asia and elsewhere in the world where other political aims or religious aims are or were at play.

In the United States we have also been subject to terrorist attacks. Jose Padilla was convicted in 2005 of being an enemy combatant of Pakistan for trying to bring a "dirty bomb" into the country. The Virginia "Jihad" Network consisting of eleven men with ties to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-i-Taiba was brought down in 2003. And in 2010, Faisal Shahzad was charged with attempting to blow up a bomb in Times Square in New York City. He had ties to the Pakistan Taliban from whom it is believed he received training.

These are just some of the attacks targeting the United States that are true terrorist attacks. I call these perpetrators "terrorists" because they are truly working with a terrorist group.

Now, we have a new issue on the horizon, what we call "homegrown" terrorists. These are usually psychopaths who join up with a terrorist network because they want to feel important; similar to someone joining a cult. I don't call Hasan a homegrown terrorist because he did not actually join a group and work with them.

Mass murderers just want their day in the sun and to take revenge on society, the society that didn't give them respect. The Columbine Mass Murders were committed by two psychopathic teenage boys who wanted to mow down the more popular kids, especially the girls who they didn't think would date them, and the wanted get their name in the papers. Cho of Virgina Tech fame had similar "Wannabe a Rockstar/Killer" ideation.

But, Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, were older and had achieved "midlife crisis" (the two major mass murder groups are teens who feel adult life offers nothing to live for and those who have become frustrated that they have not reached the level of success they wanted as adults and give up); these two men felt society had ignored them long enough. They developed a political ideology of White Superiority that propelled them to their big day in the sun and made them heroes for a cause (if only in their own minds). While they may have reached out on occasion to certain groups, gone to their websites, and read their books, they were not working with any terrorist cell. This was their big day and that big day was really about nothing but themselves. They were losers who wanted to become antiheroes and they succeeded.

Nidal Hasan didn't even work as hard as McVeigh or Breivik on any intricately developed ideology. He had moments of getting all radical Islamic when he was feeling down, but, in the end, he wanted to kill his workmates and get back at the Army he had served for half his life, the organization he felt didn't appreciate him enough. Yes, he reached out right before the mass murder to radical Islamists to give himself a better justification for his killing his fellow servicemen and he yelled "Allah Akhbar" before he pulled the trigger, but this does not him a terrorist make. He had the traits and behaviors of a mass murderer and if al-Qaeda is cheering and claiming he committed a terrorist act in the name of Allah, so be it; sometimes mass murdering psychopaths help out the terrorists.

Why do I insist on the importance between this distinction of mass murderer and terrorist? Certainly not, as this website claims, because I want to "excuse criminality" or that I want play down any radical Muslim connection to terrorist attacks. I have often labeled certain attacks terrorist attacks and if they are conducted by groups who adhere to a radical Islamic philosophy, I state this as well, and, I am hardly excusing criminality because I recommend the death penalty for either a mass murderer or a terrorist. My purpose in laying out the differences between the mass murderer and the terrorist is so that we know what to watch for and what traits and behaviors to recognize, so we can intervene before the terrorist or mass murderer strikes. This is the kind of work I do in anti-terrorism training funded by Homeland Security and TSA and in my psychopathology training for law enforcement.

Psychopathy, mass murder, and terrorism are increasing in our world. If we cannot find a way to talk about these subjects rationally, we will not be able to address and prevent these mass homicides from occurring.

::laughs::I bet all my detractors will rush over to read this before anyone else. I am not posting here to try to win them over, however; I doubt my words will change many of my hater's viewpoints of me and, in fact, I will probably see some of what Isay here distorted yet again on certain websites. However, I want truth-seeking people to have a place to get the actual facts so, I am going to clarify and correct the seven most oft-touted, incorrect, sometimes libelous claims about me that have traveled around the Internet.

Anyone who is over the age of seventy in the United States probably remembers the days when local screwballs showed up at every town meeting, sent letters in to the town newspaper, and sp0uted off at the local coffee shop. The letters got vetted and rarely printed, saner citizens at the town meetings corrected their misinformation, and if they got obnoxious at Milly's Diner, they were asked to leave. Their mental disorders were obvious and their rantings dismissed as evidence of a disordered mind. They usually weren't enough like-minded loonies in one town to with the ability to get together and form a group.

But, welcome to the year 2011 on the Internet! With a simple Google, Twitter, or Facebook search, the personality-disordered and extremist individuals have found a way to band together and spread propaganda, lies, and half-truths around Cyberspace; they have world-wide platform for their ravings and, worse yet, if a target of one of these groups becomes the target of another group, they come together to gleefully cheer on the other attackers. Let me be honest, though; not all folks who write negative things about me have psychiatric problems or are fabricators; they have heartfelt opinions about me and some are accurate about the facts. I will support their right to criticize me to their heart's content as this is what Freedom of Speech is all about.

Unfortunately, it is often hard to tell the difference between legitimate discussion - fair, if strongly felt criticism, of a person or their beliefs - and propaganda attacks. Who is standing up for truth and justice and who is just out to trash others to make themselves feel good, give themselves a sense of power, and to support their misguided agendas? How can you tell the difference? One, pay attention to the logic of the argument. Are they ignoring what the person is really saying and taking everything out of context? Two, are they making purely ad hominem attacks, veering off the topic to address various other negative suppositions about the person? Three, do they use angry and insulting language to describe the person they are denigrating when this person has not committed any kind of criminal or immoral act? Four, do your own research and go to the person's own websites, videos, Facebook, and Google, and learn what you can about that person from their own words.

When I became a criminal profiler fifteen years, I had no experience in being the victim of hate campaigns, propaganda, and stalkers. Before I embarked on my new career, I had been an full-time at-home mother, I homeschooled my children, and, when they got older, I worked part-time interpreting for the Deaf at area hospitals. My world was fairly small and I did not even have email. Then, when I rented a room to a new boyfriend of a female church friend, my life turned upside-down. Four weeks after moving into my home (and I had a background check done on him; he came back clean plus he didn't do drugs or drink), my girlfriend got creeped out by his behaviors and broke up with him. That evening, he left her home and walked down the bike path from her house to mine. The following day, a woman's body was found, naked and brutalized, in the stream next to the path.

My renter acted strangely the next morning and made the odd comment that he had indeed walked down the path but right before the location where the murdered jogger was found, he decided to wade across the stream, going out of his way, making a big U of a detour instead of continuing on, as he usually did, straight down the path to my house. He then made a disturbing comment to my friend on the phone in response to her question about possibly hurting himself over their break-up. He said, "You don't know what I have already done." The next day while he was at work, I found he had thrown away all the clothes he had worn the previous evening; his brand new jeans, his brand new tennis shoes, and his new shirt which had a number of rips in it, all wet from having been in water. He also had thrown away a perfectly nice martial arts style of knife and a clump of mud wrapped in plastic.

I turned this evidence over to the police and turned him out of my house. The detective on the case never interviewed this man in spite of his admission he was on the path at the time of the crime, in spite of the fact there was a precipitating incident occurring right before the crime, and in spite of the fact he had thrown perfectly good clothes away.

I was shocked by the lack of follow-through by this police agency. And the lack of publicity that this horrific sexual homicide of a beautiful 22-year old NASA intern received in the media. This was the start of my interest in criminal profiling, police investigations, and justice. We often hear we should not just whine about what is wrong with society, but do something about it, and I decided that this distressing failure of the criminal justice system was an area I might address as my children grew older and I had more spare time.

One thing I told myself going into this line of work was that I would always be open and honest and seek truth and justice regardless of whether it made me popular or not, upset those who didn't want to hear the truth or those that didn't want the reality of certain failures of the system exposed. It is this very pact I made with my conscience that has garnered me enemies and haters. I clearly have not played by the rules. Because of my outspoken manner, individuals and groups have risen up to discredit me - not just my viewpoint on a subject - but to attack me personally and take me down, so my opinions might be silenced or ignored. Here is where the Internet becomes open season for propaganda and disinformation, lies and half-truths that are spread without concern of any penalty, often spread by people whose names are never known. These untruths may be repeated over and remain on the Internet for decades.

It serves me little purpose to spar with each and every individual or group of like-minded people every time they post an untruth or blog a vicious attack on me. Anyone who is in the public eye is used to seeing all kinds of stuff about them spouted in various forums and one cannot engage in an ongoing battle with one's abusers. But, for the purposes of setting the record straight on some of the biggest claims made and spread about me, I will do so here this one time, so that people who want to know what is true and what is not true have a place to find out the facts. I will not name names or put links to the websites of the people who said certain things about me: they may have simply made an honest mistake or they may have said something in anger they cannot take back now that it is on the Internet or they may be aggressive individuals that don't need to get more publicity for their agenda.

Claim #1 Pat Brown is just a housewife who got her college degree from a paper mill. She is no more than a wannabe armchair detective who has never been in law enforcement and just read some books and hung out a shingle.

This a bunch of half-truths. When I decided to become a criminal profiler, I was too old to join the police or FBI; they have age discrimination. I wanted to study criminal profiling but there were no college programs. I DID rather hang out my own shingle but I was always very clear on my background. I studied hundreds of books on every connected subject which is far more than I ever read for my MA in Criminal Justice from Boston University (hardly a paper mill). I also worked in the emergency room, psych wards, holding cells, and rape examination rooms for ten years which greatly helped my understanding of forensic pathology, trauma wounds, psychology, psychopathy, rape, victimization, and criminal behavior. I also went to many seminars attended by law enforcement in the areas of crime investigation, forensics, and criminal behavior. And, finally, I did take an online course in profiling that was available at the time. I have worked fifteen years in the field and haven't been a housewife or armchair detective for a decade and a half. I have developed the first Certificate in Criminal Profiling in the United States for Excelsior College.

Claim #2 Pat Brown has never worked with law enforcement or solved a case.

I have worked with numerous law enforcement agencies over the years. I have "solved" cases in the sense that I strongly believe my profile of the case was accurate. Actually, criminal profilers don't really "solve" cases. As a deductive profiler I analyze cases, make determinations as to what most likely happened, why, and by whom, all of which I detail with the evidence that supports those determinations. It is the detectives' job to "solve" the case and the prosecutors job to take it to court. One of the most distressing things I was to learn in my many years of working cold cases is that cold cases without DNA almost never make it to court. Sadly, by the time a profiler comes in and finds a lead that went unnoticed or profiles the case in an entirely different (and possibly the correct) direction, it is almost always too late to get the evidence to pursue the case to any conclusion. Because of this problem, an outside profiler's work is usually then quietly filed away and the police agency will not discuss the fact that the profiler might have been right and that the investigation was wrongheaded for years. In my experience, a portion of cases that become cold do so because the investigative focus was incorrect early on. For this reason, I rarely work cold cases anymore. Instead, I am working to encourage the establishment of criminal profilers in police departments that will be part of the team when the case is fresh. I also am working to see that detectives get better training in profiling so that they can improve the analyses of their own cases. Detectives are often undertrained due to budget issues and overworked due to those same budget issues. Some are simply new on the job and lack skill and experience. Many detectives do a very good job on cases and these get solved. I want to see see the closure rate improve and that is the main goal of my career.

This is a half-truth. Some profilers like me a lot. Some can't stand me. There is a lot of professional jealousy and egos in the field, partially because there are not enough profilers in the field, so the few that exist fight to be the most known. I would like to see the day when there are hundreds of profilers across the country so that we can all just do our jobs without grandstanding. As to the FBI profilers who might not speak kindly of me, their issues with me are two-fold: one, the FBI used to be the only source of profilers and the advent of independent criminal profilers is competition, and two, the FBI employs inductive profiling while I use deductive profiling and there is a rift in the field over which methodology is better.

Claim #4 Pat Brown stalks people.

This one started with my investigation of my renter, the person-of-interest in the sexual homicide and my second case as a profiler. Another profiler (whose well-written books I promote) was not happy with my rising visibility in criminal profiling field. He wrote on his website that I had stalked two men I suspected of sexual homicides. He claimed that there was no evidence in either crime indicating that my persons-of-interest had any involvement. This was blatantly untrue.

My renter (pseudonym Walt Williams in my book, The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths), is and has been for the past fourteen years, the one and only suspect in the sexual homicide of the jogger. It took me six years to get the case reopened after the first detective had closed the case administratively, blaming the murder on an 18-year-old boy who committed suicide in the area a few days after the crime. There was no evidence linking that young man to the homicide. In 1996, the new detective on the case, reviewed the physical evidence I had found and the behavioral evidence I had uncovered and Walt Williams finally became a person-of-interest. He was brought in and polygraphed and had his DNA tested. He fail the poly but because so much time had passed and there was no DNA from the perpetrator from the scene of sufficient quantity to test, there was not a good enough case for arrest and prosecution. However, the detective agreed with me that the evidence pointed heavily in the direction of Walt Williams and that he believed he Williams was likely the perpetrator.The case remains open to this day.

The second case in which the other profiler claims I pursued an innocent man for no justifiable reason, was brought to me by the son of the murdered woman who was frustrated with the detectives on the case who kept saying her fiance killed her. After profiling the case, I came up with a match to my profile; Bobby Joe Leonard, a man who had been doing temporary work on the woman's property three weeks prior to the crime and had been allowed into the woman's bedroom to remove an old computer she was giving to him. The woman was found strangled and her body hidden in her bedroom closet. This man, Bobby Joe Leonard, the man the other profiler says I targeted unfairly, is serving a life sentence for the abduction, rape and attempted murder of a 13-year-old girl hestrangled and hid in a closet. Prosecutors on that case agree with me that Bobby Joe Leonard likely murdered my client's mother, but the police department on the case still refuses to acknowledge Leonard's probable involvement and the case remains open to this day.

The third stalking claim is that I went after a true crime author to find out if his dead wife had been truly raped. This is a half-truth. I was part of the author's blog, one of the regulars who posted every month. One Thanksgiving, this man posted a faux slasher video as a humorous item for the readers' "holiday enjoyment." The video showed a teenage cheerleader jumping on a trampoline who then did the splits and came down on a sword pushed through the trampoline up through her vagina. The second video showed a dead women trussed up like a turkey and served for dinner. Sweet, eh? Well, a few of us female authors on the blog were upset with this misogynistic offering, especially because many readers of that blog were victims of crime or families of crime victims. The blog owner's response was that we were a bunch of old ninnies and there was nothing wrong with gore and slasher films and even victims of crime thought they were cool. He said certain well-known victim's organizations liked him a lot and had no issues with his support in the making and promotion of violent gore and slasher films.

So, I contacted these organizations who all soundly denied approving of this man's placement of the Thanksgiving faux slasher video on the site and I received statements from these organizations that they in no way approve of misogynistic slasher/gore films.

While in the midst of proving that victims of brutal crime do not think gore/slasher films are cool, I read that this true crime/blog owner's deceased wife supposedly was the victim of a brutal gang rape. I found that extremely bizarre; how could the husband of a woman who had suffered the horror and indignity of the worst kind of rape promote films which depict the rape and mutilation of women? So I sent an email to find out if this story about the deceased wife was true. It turned out it was. I am not sure if it would be better to believe someone had made up the story to have common ground with the victims of crime he interviews for the books he writes or to think he lacked empathy for women who have suffered the same sexual violence as his departed wife. I think I would have preferred the former as I have long been a strong voice against gore and slasher films; I think they encourage violent ideation in psychopathic individuals and are a sick form of amusement no society should be proud of or wish to see proliferate. Having said all of this, I will say that this particular author writes perfectly readable true crime books. My issue with him was over continued victimization of victims of violent crime and promotion of psychopathic criminal fantasy.

The fourth victim I supposedly stalked was the webmaster for the true crime author above. For the next four years, she posted derogatory things about me on many blogs and forums, on her MySpace page, on Twitter, on Facebook; she wrote whole pieces attacking me and even established a blog dedicated to proving me a fraud. She harassed me repeatedly on my own blogs and Facebook pages. I was able to preserves pages and pages of evidence in case there was every a point in taking action. Meanwhile, I never sent her an email or responded back except for one time on my own blog telling her to cease and desist. Yet, to this day she claims that I was the stalker, her stalker. Not only has she stalked me, but there is a long list of people she has harassed over the years causing them incredible stress and grief, especially to those not quite as high profile in the media as me, who are not used to ongoing attacks and abuse. Too bad she has taken this route because she actually is a very intelligent person and writes quite decently.

Claim #4 Pat Brown abuses victims.

This accusation was actually started by the stalker above. She claimed the wife of the true crime author was a victim of my stalking (which is an odd label to be given for asking one question) and then she became the next victim stalked (purportedly because she wrote an unpleasant post about me. She claims I know that she has been the victim of domestic abuse and other horrific abuses meted out by others that have caused her emotional suffering and I wanted to do her in because she spoke up against me). Working to promote me as an "abuser of victims," she (and others have jumped on board) claim that my work to educate women on the dangers of certain behaviors, behaviors that put one in harm's way, is somehow victimizing victims. When I warn women that drinking too much can make one unable to fend off a date rapist, they claim I am blaming the woman, not the rapist for the crime. When I warn women not to go running in isolated places, they claim I am blaming the jogger, not the serial killer for the crime. When I warn young women not to meet with their ex-boyfriend alone so he can "get closure," they claim I am blaming the young women for their psycho boyfriend killing them. What I have said and will say again is that our criminal justice system is too soft on predators, that they ought to be locked up and not let back out or at least get long sentences, but, since they are soft and the predators are out there, we must warn women and teach them how to stay out of their clutches.

Claim #5 Pat Brown excuses criminality and is a big leftist.

There is a new link to a blog making it way around the Internet which claims Pat Brown is soft on criminals and is some kind of pawn of the liberal media.

This claim always make me laugh. I have no issues with people being liberal or conservative, or even far to the right or left. I may have a rousing discussion with them but I can still like a person with diametrically opposing views. I, myself, am a conservative, a constitutionalist, pro-Second Amendment, pro-carry, and pro-death penalty. The concept that I am a big liberal/anti-gun/soft on crime started in two places. Both came from the far right over the issues of gun control and terrorism. Some pro-gun folk on a particular site got all bent out of shape over a television commentary I did on men who kill their girlfriends. I pointed out that if you are a woman and you note these three things in your fellow, you might want to run the other way: a very controlling personality, an obsession with violence, and a massive gun collection. These pro-gun folks only paid attention to the last part and saw red; Pat Brown is saying all men with a gun collection are violent psychopaths who kill their wives and girlfriends.

Of course, this is not true. I know many men with gun collections, but they don't have continual violent ideation nor are they control freaks who push their women around. What is funnier is that I own two weapons and my children own weapons, more than one weapon each. I am pro-carry. But, for years, it has been claimed I am a big liberal who wants to take everyone's guns away!

The other far right group that decided I was a big leftist went nuts after I labeled the Ft. Hood Shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, a mass murderer rather than a terrorist. One site claims that I refused to even clarify my position, that I have some nerve to not call him a terrorist, even though I detailed three times over in the video they posted of me on FOX news my exact definitions of a mass murderer and a terrorist and why I think Hasan is the former and not the latter. I will explain it here again so somewhere on the Internet it is clear what I really believe and why.

A terrorist is someone who works with a terrorist organization over a period of time, is bred to be a terrorist and instructed on what to do by the organization. Then, the terrorist carries out the terrorist attack on behalf of the terrorist organization and its ideology. Finally, the attack itself, although the terrorist might have psychopathological issues of his own, is committed in order to forward a political ideology and coerce a government or country into making concessions that benefit the group's agenda.

A mass murderer is psychopath who has issues in his own life and wants to do something that will show the world it should have paid more attention to him, that he is someone important, and now they will never forget him. They want to go out with a bang and make all the newspapers. They may create a political ideology to justify their big day but they have not been trained nor are they working in concert with a terrorist organization.

9/11 was a terrorist attack; this is clear. So are other terrorist attacks; for example, places that blow up in India and Egypt are terrorist attacks; Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi in India, and Sharm-el-Sheik and Luxor in Egypt. Most of the Indian attacks are over who should own Kashmir - Pakistan or India (or neither) - and are committed by members of Lashkar-i-Taiba (LET). Some of the attacks are over Bangladesh. Egypt has a variety of factions trying to force the government to act toward Israel or the US in the way that terrorist group wishes. They are all politically motivated and usually involve lengthy planning and groups of operatives. The 1983 bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon was a terrorist attack aimed at getting the United States to go home. It worked. The 2004 Madrid train bombings were carried out to influence the upcoming election and to get Spain to pull out of Iraq. It worked. Most of these terrorist attacks cited are radical Islamist groups, but not all terrorist attacks are committed by al-Qaeda or their cells or Islamic radicals. There are and have been terror groups in India (some are radical Hindus or Radical Christians), Sri Lanka, Africa, South America, Asia and elsewhere in the world where other political aims or religious aims are or were at play.

In the United States we have also been subject to terrorist attacks. Jose Padilla was convicted in 2005 of being an enemy combatant of Pakistan for trying to bring a "dirty bomb" into the country. The Virginia "Jihad" Network consisting of eleven men with ties to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Lashkar-i-Taiba was brought down in 2003. And in 2010, Faisal Shahzad was charged with attempting to blow up a bomb in Times Square in New York City. He had ties to the Pakistan Taliban from whom it is believed he received training.

These are just some of the attacks targeting the United States that are true terrorist attacks. I call these perpetrators "terrorists" because they are truly working with a terrorist group.

Now, we have a new issue on the horizon, what we call "homegrown" terrorists. These are usually psychopaths who join up with a terrorist network because they want to feel important; similar to someone joining a cult. I don't call Hasan a homegrown terrorist because he did not actually join a group and work with them.

Mass murderers just want their day in the sun and to take revenge on society, the society that didn't give them respect. The Columbine Mass Murders were committed by two psychopathic teenage boys who wanted to mow down the more popular kids, especially the girls who they didn't think would date them, and the wanted get their name in the papers. Cho of Virgina Tech fame had similar "Wannabe a Rockstar/Killer" ideation.

But, Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh, and Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, were older and had achieved "midlife crisis" (the two major mass murder groups are teens who feel adult life offers nothing to live for and those who have become frustrated that they have not reached the level of success they wanted as adults and give up); these two men felt society had ignored them long enough. They developed a political ideology of White Superiority that propelled them to their big day in the sun and made them heroes for a cause (if only in their own minds). While they may have reached out on occasion to certain groups, gone to their websites, and read their books, they were not working with any terrorist cell. This was their big day and that big day was really about nothing but themselves. They were losers who wanted to become antiheroes and they succeeded.

Nidal Hasan didn't even work as hard as McVeigh or Breivik on any intricately developed ideology. He had moments of getting all radical Islamic when he was feeling down, but, in the end, he wanted to kill his workmates and get back at the Army he had served for half his life, the organization he felt didn't appreciate him enough. Yes, he reached out right before the mass murder to radical Islamists to give himself a better justification for his killing his fellow servicemen and he yelled "Allah Akhbar" before he pulled the trigger, but this does not him a terrorist make. He had the traits and behaviors of a mass murderer and if al-Qaeda is cheering and claiming he committed a terrorist act in the name of Allah, so be it; sometimes mass murdering psychopaths help out the terrorists.

Why do I insist on the importance between this distinction of mass murderer and terrorist? Certainly not, as this website claims, because I want to "excuse criminality" or that I want play down any radical Muslim connection to terrorist attacks. I have often labeled certain attacks terrorist attacks and if they are conducted by groups who adhere to a radical Islamic philosophy, I state this as well, and, I am hardly excusing criminality because I recommend the death penalty for either a mass murderer or a terrorist. My purpose in laying out the differences between the mass murderer and the terrorist is so that we know what to watch for and what traits and behaviors to recognize, so we can intervene before the terrorist or mass murderer strikes. This is the kind of work I do in anti-terrorism training funded by Homeland Security and TSA and in my psychopathology training for law enforcement.

Psychopathy, mass murder, and terrorism are increasing in our world. If we cannot find a way to talk about these subjects rationally, we will not be able to address and prevent these mass homicides from occurring.

Claim #6 Pat Brown is always wrong.

Okay, no one can claim they are always right, but I think I do a pretty fair job with my analyses and I do explain why I think what I do. The big "proofs" that I am incompetent at profiling concern the 2010 disappearance of David Hartley in which the wife, Tiffany, claimed her husband was shot (and his body hidden) by a Mexican drug cartel in boats as they jet-skied on a lake on the boarder of the US and Mexico, and the DC Snipers' case that terrified the Washington DC metro area for three weeks in 2002.

The claim about me on the Hartley case is plain silly. It has made the rounds through the Internet that I posted a blog about the case saying I found Hartley's story questionable and then pulled it off so no one could see what I said. Each new person who who writes that about "my missing blog post" links back to the site the original bogus claim; apparently, none of these people know how to do a Google search to check their facts. Put in "Tiffany Hartley Pat Brown" and lo, and behold, you will find the blog post on Women in Crime Ink (click on the link to the left and save yourself the trouble of the Google search) where I moved it a couple days after posting it on The Daily Profiler because we were lacking a post that day on WCI and I moved blog post on Hartley over there.

The claim that I had the DC Sniper case completely wrong came from a bad reporting job (in a major media piece) in which it was inferred that I said the Snipers where White (actually, the author of that piece spoke about how profilers got the race wrong and then my name was included in the general group of profilers who gave commentary on television, so it looked like I guess the race wrong as well. Oddly, I agreed with a lot of the author's criticisms of criminal profiling, that too much is guess work occurs in profiling and not enough determinations are based on evidence). As to my profiling the Snipers' race wrong, actually, the opposite was true. I was on a program with another person who said that serial killers were all White and, therefore, the DC Snipers were as well. My mouth dropped because I thought that old myth had been put to rest. I certainly knew that this was foolish because my renter, my person-of-interest in the murder of the jogger, was African-American as happened to be Bobby Joe Leonard. I said, on air, that this was incorrect, that serial killers come in all races and nationalities, and because the DC Snipers were shooting at a distance and we had no witness or evidence pointing toward what race they were, we had no clue. Interestingly, one thing I did say, again on air, was that whoever was doing the shootings likely had a stack of Guns & Ammo magazines lying around. This was said a bit tongue and cheek as I was simply pointing out that the killer/killers seemed to really like their weapons. As it turned out, Malvo, the younger of the DC Snipers, left behind a fingerprint on a magazine at a store robbery which led to their downfall. The fingerprint was on a Guns & Ammo magazine.

I am not saying I am the "perfect profiler" anymore than a doctor might not on occasion botch a diagnosis or an attorney lose a case. I do my best and I work hard to explain my reasoning so you can decide for yourself (and this includes the detectives who I have profiled for) if my analysis makes sense. I always think second opinions are worth getting in any field.

Well, I have never been in this business for fame and money. I want to change profiling methodology. I want to see more killers put away for good. I want to see children not suffer at the hands of pedophiles and abusive parents. I have never cared much for a fancy lifestyle and anyone who knows me knows this is true. Staying home with babies and then homeschooling for a total of twenty years is not a great way to become rich! I have always done pro bono work for law enforcement (not because they won't pay me but because independent profilers have never been funded by police agencies to any degree) and I continue to do so. I do not object, however, to earning a living and what I do for a living is profiling, commentating, educating, and writing. If I don't accept money for any of my time spent working, I will be living under a bridge.

If I really wanted to get great publicity and make good money, I would have profiled the West Memphis Three (WM3) as innocent of the murder of three little boys and I would have profiled the Madeleine McCann case as nothing but an abduction. I would have sold a ton of those profiles and had a huge group to cheer on my analyses. Instead, looking at the evidence, my profiles question the innocence of the three convicted men in the WM3 case and the claim of abduction in the Madeleine McCann case. I have receive a massive amount of abuse for standing up for what I think the evidence points to instead of jumping on the bandwagon which would be the easy way out.

As I head into a legal battle with my attorney, Anne Bremner (read my Women in Crime Ink blog post on the issue) with Gerry and Kate McCann over having their solicitors, Carter-Ruck, threaten Amazon with a libel lawsuit (okay, it was a notice of defamation but if you get a letter from the biggest libel attorneys in the world saying a book is defamatory and the letter is a clear warning that there will be legal action if the book is not removed from sale, it certainly is a threat of a libel lawsuit) if they didn't pull my book, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, from the market (ebook still available at B&N and Smashwords), I am sure the attacks on me will increase. I have already received a label of publicity whore and scumbag who makes money off the blood of murdered and missing children; I'll live. But, there is something very important at stake here in my upcoming lawsuit against the McCanns; Freedom of Speech and Justice for Children.

First, Freedom of Speech. If we end up in a world where people connected to criminal cases can muzzle the detectives, profilers, the media, the public...anyone who disagrees with a particular line of thinking, anyone who might have a different theory of what happened, any citizen who might want to fight to see a case solved, see justice done and public safety upheld, then we will have a worsening situation for missing and murdered children. The McCanns insist that their daughter, Madeleine, was abducted and is not dead and they have a large following supporting their contentions and donating money to search for a living child. I have no issue with this. If Madeleine McCann turns out to be alive, living with some crazy family or being held captive by some pedophile ring, I want that ring shut down and that crazy family put away. I am glad there are some looking at these options; if the theory I believe has the most evidence to support it about Madeleine not being alive proves not to be what happened to Madeleine and the theory that she is alive turns out to be the right one, I will be glad someone was checking it out.

On the other hand, if my theory that Madeleine is not alive is correct, then shouldn't someone be looking for a local pedophile in Praia da Luz, Portugal, who has murdered the little girl and may be looking for the next child to torture and kill? Don't we want justice then for Madeleine and safety for other children? And, if it turns out that Madeleine died of an accident in the McCann's vacation apartment and there was a cover-up, shouldn't this be brought to light that the Portuguese Detective Amaral was correct in his analysis and the Fund is a scam rather than a resource to find Madeleine and bring her home?

I see nothing wrong with discussing a number of theories and arguing their merits; however the McCanns threaten lawsuits any time someone questions what happened to Madeleine that night that doesn't agree with their particular theory. The McCanns committed serious child neglect leaving three toddlers alone to fend for themselves in an unsafe situation (no adults to help them in case of accident or illness, strange apartment, locked doors some nights which could cause them to die in a fire, and unlocked doors other nights that could cause them to be kidnapped or wander off) night after night and, since there is no evidence of an abduction and there is a possibility that an accident could have befallen one of the unattended children, the McCanns should not blame anyone for theorizing that maybe no one kidnapped Madeleine and that Madeleine is not alive.

If we look the other way when children are neglected and abused, if we excuse poor behaviors on the part of parents that threaten their children's health and welfare, if we ignore pedophiles and serial killers that may have killed a child just so we can pretend the child is alive, if we get mad every time someone points out reality and truth -especially if it means we sue them or remove their voice from being heard - we will not be able to improve our investigative methods or our criminal justice system, and we won't be able to focus on societal issues that need to be addressed and ameliorated. If we stop people from speaking up, we lose our freedom to challenge and defend, and our chance for each of us to make a difference in bettering this world.

I hope my post enlightens everyone as to "The Truth about Pat Brown." You may love me or you may hate me, support me or wish I would go away, but, if nothing else, you have heard it from the horse's mouth and not the donkey's. And I won't infringe on your Freedom of Speech if you don't infringe on mine.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

I have been getting a lot of questions about my search fund to be established with monies from the sale of my book, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Some of the stuff certain folks are saying is seriously ridiculous, so I thought it best I make a clear statement with simple points they can understand.

1. I am not giving or receiving any monies from the McCanns' search fund.

2. At present, 50% of monies received from the sale of the Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann will go to the Pat Brown Maddie Search Fund. The other 50% earned from the book is income, not donations. I am selling a product and do not have to donate all earnings (or any) to charitable causes (however, I do pro bono work on other cases as there are OTHER missing and murdered children and adults than Madeleine in this world, so part of my earnings through any means funds this). I have chosen to donate 50% of the book's earnings to my Maddie search fund since she is the focus of this book.

3. The Pat Brown Maddie Search Fund monies will be not be spent on a personal salary (any time spent will be pro bono). Monies will be used for expenses related to doing a search: travel, equipment, hiring of local PIs, or bringing in experts.

4. If I can cover any search expenses by another other method (media, work in the same location, etc.), then I will do so. I always endeavor to always keep costs low when I do pro bono work so that the funds will stretch further: inexpensive hotels, staying with local people, cheap meals, etc.). If I choose to spend above the cheapest rate I can achieve, I pay out-of-pocket.

5. The Pat Brown Maddie Search Fund will be transparent with all monies earned on the book tracked, all monies put into the account tracked, and all monies spent tracked. A full account will be made to the public of everything associated with my fund and my searches.

6. The Pat Brown Maddie Search Fund has no connection with the McCanns' search fund and the McCanns have not given my fund any endorsement. However, it would seem to me if I search in previously untargeted places and either locate Madeleine or eliminate those possibilities, then the search is nothing but beneficial to the McCanns and is following in the spirit of "Leaving No Stone Unturned."

7. There are four theories as to what happened to Madeleine which influence how one searches for the child; whether one thinks she is dead or alive.

One:, the child died accidentally in the apartment in Praia da Luz and there was a cover-up; then we are looking for a dead child in Portugal, Spain, or England.

Two: a local pedophile abducted Madeleine; then we are looking for a dead child in Praia da Luz, Portugal or nearby.

Three: A woman wanted a little girl and got a man to kidnap Madeleine. Then we are looking for a live child somewhere in the world.

Four: A pedophile sex ring kidnapped Madeleine and she is being raped and abused on a continuing basis. Then we are looking for a live child somewhere in the world.

Now, as one only has limited funds (even the McCanns, although they have been quite hefty), it behooves one to put the strongest efforts into the most likely scenario. If the McCanns were not involved in any way (other than neglect) in the disappearance of their daughter, they ought to be using kindhearted people's donations in the most proper way; looking for a pedophile who abducted, raped and murdered their little girl, get him arrested and convicted so that Madeleine gets justice, and prevent another little girl from the same horrible fate. They should be putting a good portion of their search and investigative efforts into locating a local child sex predator.

Why? Because the methodology and descriptions of how Madeleine was supposedly kidnapped and by whom match a person from the area without even a vehicle to take her away in. There is zero evidence of any fancy plot nor even a person smart enough to park a vehicle in the car park right outside the window of Madeleine's bedroom in with which to make a quick getaway. Instead, we have the purported actions and descriptions of some creepy, not-so-bright fellow walking down the street with a child in his arms in full view of everyone. The chances of Madeleine being taken by a desperate wanna-be-Mom or a sex ring are minimal.

Should the McCanns still consider these rare possibilities and still look for a living Madeleine? Well, I can't blame the McCanns (if innocent) for wanting to believe their daughter is alive, so I can understand and accept that they want to put some efforts into that miracle possibility. However, they should be honest enough and good enough stewards of donated monies I(if innocent) to admit the likelihood of Madeleine being dead is very, very high and the likelihood of her being buried somewhere in Praia da Luz or environs is also very, very high. Their efforts should be concentrated there, with some monies set aside for the miracle.

So, I will be focusing on the two top theories; that Madeleine died in an accident and her body was hidden somewhere, or a local pedophile took her and her body is buried locally. IF it turns out that I get ANY information that proves Madeleine was abducted or if any evidence turns up that points to her murder by a stranger, this information will go straight to the police and the McCanns. If Maddie was abducted and murdered by a child predator, I want justice for Maddie and I want that creep put away and I want other children to be safe from him.

My theory as I laid out in my Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann is just that; a theory. If evidence surfaces that changes my view of what happened to Madeleine, I have no problem disclosing this and adjusting my theory. Theories change based on available evidence; hence, they are called theories, not facts. Theories often change over time, even those postulated by law enforcement and the McCanns. Even Kate admits in her book, Madeleine, her theories of what happened that night have undergone change as she has spent more time analyzing the evidence or after receiving new information.

Why the McCanns had Carter-Ruck threaten Amazon with legal action to get a theory removed from public view is curious as it is only a theory, an opinion, one person's take on probabilities based on what is known at this point in time. Perhaps we will find out why they went to these lengths when the McCanns get on the witness stand in a court of law (when my lawsuit for libel and tortious interference with business makes it to court; I have retained prominent attorney Anne Bremner of Stanford Frey Cooper). Perhaps, then, they will explain why one person's opinion is so concerning they need to go to extremes to get have it silenced.

Madeleine McCann is the most recognized missing child in the world, with the most media attention of any missing child in the world. Unless I am mistaken, more money has been donated to finding Madeleine McCann than any child in the world. My Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann should hardly affect such a large and successful (moneywise) campaign; so one wonders if the real issue the McCanns have with my profile is that my theory might actually be correct.

I believe in Freedom of Speech. I don't object to the theories of others on cases even if they differ from mine. I don't even object to someone analyzing my theory and writing their opinion of it. I would never try to shut down their viewpoint (even when things are taken out of context and misrepresented in some way); I merely suggest that interested people go to the source and compare the two viewpoints and think for themselves about what theories and concepts are more supportable by evidence and logic.

The McCanns could simply have ignored this profiler's opinion on Madeleine's disappearance or made a statement that they do not think my analysis is very good. If the book was truly libelous as they claimed through their solicitors, Carter-Ruck, they should have informed me of this or sued me directly. Instead, they went behind the scenes and had the book pulled from the market. Inquiring minds wonder why.

I will be in Portugal in February to support Detective Amaral's fight against the McCanns in court, to begin search analysis, and to hear just what Gerry and Kate McCann have to say.

May the truth come out one day and justice for Madeleine McCann prevail.

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By Pat Brown

"Killing for Sport is the most valuable insight into the minds of serial killers that you will ever read. While other profilers tend to conceal the clear facts behind complex technical language and psychobabble. Pat Brown actually tells it like it is."